Skip to content
Snippets Groups Projects
user avatar
Masahiro Yamada authored
Multiple people have suggested compile-testing UAPI headers to ensure
they can be really included from user-space. "make headers_check" is
obviously not enough to catch bugs, and we often leak unresolved
references to user-space.

Use the new header-test-y syntax to implement it. Please note exported
headers are compile-tested with a completely different set of compiler
flags. The header search path is set to $(objtree)/usr/include since
exported headers should not include unexported ones.

We use -std=gnu89 for the kernel space since the kernel code highly
depends on GNU extensions. On the other hand, UAPI headers should be
written in more standardized C, so they are compiled with -std=c90.
This will emit errors if C++ style comments, the keyword 'inline', etc.
are used. Please use C style comments (/* ... */), '__inline__', etc.
in UAPI headers.

There is additional compiler requirement to enable this test because
many of UAPI headers include <stdlib.h>, <sys/ioctl.h>, <sys/time.h>,
etc. directly or indirectly. You cannot use kernel.org pre-built
toolchains [1] since they lack <stdlib.h>.

I reused CONFIG_CC_CAN_LINK to check the system header availability.
The intention is slightly different, but a compiler that can link
userspace programs provide system headers.

For now, a lot of headers need to be excluded because they cannot
be compiled standalone, but this is a good start point.

[1] https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/tools/crosstool/index.html



Signed-off-by: default avatarMasahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarSam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
d6fc9fcb
History
Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.